One of the most cliché pieces of advice is to focus on what you’re passionate about. I’ve taken this advice to heart for most of my life.
Honestly, I was never forced to do anything I didn’t actually enjoy. I quit piano lessons because I didn’t like them. I enjoyed solving Rubik’s Cubes, so I grinded towards that. Programming was fun, so I wrote code. And this seems like such an ideal childhood, but it's a double-edged sword. There were inevitably times where I had to do things I didn’t enjoy, like study for a history test or memorize Spanish vocabulary. And in general, you’ll eventually have to do things that feel more like means to an end instead of intrinsically fulfilling.
I associate things that you are forced to do, but don’t enjoy, with having an end goal. Let’s say you want to become a doctor—you have to take so many different science courses, and it’s extremely unlikely that you like all of them. But these are almost necessary evils, things you have to push through in order to achieve your “goal.”
The notion of a goal comes up a lot in this blog, and I’ve already talked about why I think they are counterproductive. And by choosing the specific aspects of a goal that you like, and pouring more time into them, you’re straying away from deriving motivation exclusively from that goal, which is the worst type of motivation.
I think this idea has a lot of value in theory, but the real world is more complicated. Economically, pursuing only what you like is not the most optimal way to make money. Even if people dislike parts of the job, they still pursue careers as doctors, and for good reason. So what’s the balance here? I think people should try to connect the work they dislike to the work that they like. For example, I used to hate debugging code, but I realized that it was inherently necessary if I actually wanted working code. And by debugging more, I would learn to write cleaner code in the future. If you make this link subconscious, it’ll feel like you actually like the stuff that you disliked to begin with.
I think how easily you can form these links serves as a litmus test for whether you should actually do those things that you dislike. If it’s really hard to internalize why you’re doing something, it's objectively better just to not do it. But the other side of this is actually knowing what it means to like what you do. This is a topic for another blog, but the cliché advice is that you just know.
Honestly, I put off writing this blog because I thought I was just coping with my inability to stereotypically “put my head down and work.” But I’ve since realized that this is unsustainable in the long run, and that there’s another lesson here. Learning to seek out failure in the things that you like instead of superficial highs in the you don’t.
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